A THOUSAND WORDS - Alex Waterhouse-Hayward's blog on pictures, plants, politics and whatever else is on his mind.

A Face As Round & Dull As A Norfolk Dumpling

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Some years ago I found out that I could no longer read any
tomes of my early 20th century collection of H.G. Wells novels and short
stories. They seemed to me that if at one time Wells (1866- 1946) had been
considered a good writer his style had somewhat not aged well. On the other
hand when I re-read my The PenguinComplete Father Brown by G.K Chesterton
(1874-1936) I found the stories fresh and exciting. While Chesterton was not
alive when the atomic bombs exploded over Japan as Wells had, the former author
seemed to be the more modern one.

My interest in Chesterton arose from the memory of going to
see with my father in 1954 the film Father
Brown (released in the US as The
Detective) with Alec Guinness as Chesterton's sleuth priest. There were films before
this 1954 version and a few after including TV series here and there and even
one right now. In recent years as I have read most of the output of Jorge Luís Borges I have been delighted to find out that Borges considered Chesterton to be his biggest influence. He particularly admired the fantastic stories of Father Brown.

Alas I lost my Penguin Edition. Just a few days ago it
re-surfaced in a long forgotten closet bookcase.

I read the first story The
Blue Cross (1910) today. This is the story that inspired the Alec Guinness
movie. When I opened to the first page I was struck with curiosity as to whom
the book was dedicated – Waldo and Mildred D’Avigdor. So I went in search of
them in Google. This is what I found:

Waldo Percy Henry dÁvigdo (1877-1947) and his wife, the
former Mildred Wain, were both friends of Chesterton before they met and
married. G.K.’s older friendship with Waldo went back to his boyhood when they
were students at St. Paul’s School, a school for boys in the Hammersmith
borough of London. It had been founded in the early 1500s and attended by such
notables as Milton and Pepys.

Gilbert and Waldo were among the dozen or so members of a
small but energetic club that G.K. and his friends established. They called it
the Junior Debating Society although, as Chesterton says in his Autobiography,
if there was a Senior Debating Society none of them had heard of it. The club
published a periodical called TheDebater in which appeared some of Chesterton’s
earliest prose and verse.

About a third of the members, including Waldo and his
brother, were Jewish. Years later Chesterton described Waldo as a person who ‘masks
with complete fashionable triviality a Hebraic immutability of passion tried in
a more ironical and bitter service than his Father Jacob’ (Maisie Ward, Gilbert
Keith Chesterton, p, 103)

The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown – Edited by
Martin Gardner

As for Chesterton’s writing consider:

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they
happen. A few clouds in heaven do come together into the staring shape of one
human eye. A tree does stand up in the landscape of a doubtful journey in the
exact and elaborate shape of a note of interrogation. I have seen both these
things myself within the last few days. Nelson does die in the instant of victory;
a man named Williams does quite accidentally murder a man named Williamson; it
sounds like a sort of infanticide. In short, there is in life an element of
elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic my perpetually miss. As
It has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen.

La Noche Boca ArribaIn a most recent early morning visit to my cardiologist I found myself in a waiting room with two friends. We three did not know we shared heart problems and yet there we were in a most unforeseen manner. One of my friends had recently returned from a bike trip in France. His face was all swollen and he had a black eye. "Did you fall there?" I asked him. "No," he answered, "I fell from my bike in Vancouver."Jorge Luís Borges was a fan of G.K. Chesterton. Borges quoted him lots in poems and short stories. This version, below, of G.K. Chesterton’s poem Lepanto, was translated by Jorge Luís Borges and it appeared in the premier issue of the Argentine magazine Sol y Luna. Below the poem I have posted a link to a reading of Lepanto in English

When you are living with an acutely disruptive teenager as
we are inspiration comes because of desperate times. An assignment to paint
selfies with watercolours (to date not completed or begun) led me to the idea
of going into my bathroom and painting my face with watercolours (using my
index finger) and then pressing a sheet of paper against my face. According to
my friend Ian Bateson, tissue paper would produce better results. Another idea
I had was to suggest placing one’s face on a scanner and since our printer is a
b+w laser printer the result could be painted with water colours to satisfy the
school assignment.

My wife Rosemary and I attended the opening performance of
Richard Bean (story) and music and songs by Grant Olding, One Man, Two Guvnors
last night. It was an Arts Club Theatre production directed by David Mackay at
the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage.

Attempting to explain the plot of this play (which is not
quite a musical) would be as difficult as defining that other terrific play
Bullet Catch at the Granville Island Review Stage.

I must here confess that I made lots of money in the 90s
flying all over for Reader’s Digest. As a young boy my grandmother gave me a
Spanish edition subscription to Selecciones del Reader’s Digest.

So with my special inside connection to the magazine I can
assert that in One Man, Two Guvnors, that indeed laughter is the best medicine.
Rosemary and I laughed all night as did the audience.

I will after making some subjective assertions about the
play (I am not a theatre critic nor would I ever want to be one) I will then
explain the curious facts behind Andrew McNee’s (Francis) Argyle Sweater and
tie (socks, too?) and Cailin Stadnyk’s skirt and sweater.

First to the very bad.

As far as I could tell this play would have annoyed and
dismayed anybody expecting an accordion player or tap dancing. I was not in the
least dismayed or annoyed.

While I have seen many musicals at the Arts Club (and have
come to almost appreciate them) as a Latin American I have never understood
when people are talking suddenly start thinking. In Vancouver now by Arts Club Theatre standards, singers must know how to dance, dancers must know how to sing, actors must know how to dance and sing. While I have heard actors play musical saws in the Penelopiad I had never seen an actor (Martin Happer as Stanley Stubbers) play an array of bicycle horns.

The Very GoodThe bicycle horns as played by Martin Happer were really good. I am glad all those actors can sing, dance and play instruments. I am glad all those musicians can act and dance.

This play is strictly speaking not a musical. There are
musical numbers by a most competent ensemble and by just about every other
member of the cast, but when they sing they sing and when they talk they
talk.They never, thankfully, ever merge
into a full-fledged musical.That is
very good!

Ryan Beil (Allan Dangle) is funny even if he recited the
grocery list from Walter M. Miller Jr’s A Canticle for Leibovitz.

While I am not partial in the least to accordion players
Spencer Schoening’s washboard playing was unusually good and with his glasses
he reminded me of what Buddy Holly might have looked at when young. If I
weren’t 72 and could relive a mid-life crisis I would leave Rosemary, buy a red
Miata and propose to the young man.

It is amazing to see a wonderfully talented young actor,
Anton Lipovetsky, listed in the program as Musical Director also kill us with
his electric guitar. If I ever get married in another life I would first take
my fiancée to a restaurant where Lipovetsky would be the maître d'.

Martin Happer who plays the Englishman of that certain upper
class, Stanley Stubbers is my idea of the ideal cricket player.

Celine Stubel

Celine Stubel as the sometimes-for-a-while-man (and almost an
identical twin to a dead man) Rachel Crabbe would perhaps make me dump Spencer
Schoening, keep the red Miata, leave my wife and go for her in her fedora off for a picnic with her cute ladybug lunchbox.

Most might not know that the word and brand name Viagra is a
combination of the words vigorous and Niagara Falls. Watching Cailin Stadnyk
(that gold lame dress! congrats Costume Designer Nancy Bryant for that!) and in that sweater (a tad too small?) made my heart stir. If I
saw this play, every day for its entire run I, too would not need a hat peg like Andrew
McNee and I would save on pharmaceuticals.

Amir Ofek’s set design moved here and there to my delight
and surprise. He even managed to whisk away drummer Spencer Schoening without a
gong in sight.

Robert Sandergard’s lighting always revealed to me the
details I was interested in seeing. There were many of those.

Andrew Cownden as the almost-dead (but not quite) Alfie and
wonderful harmonica player induced ample use of my diaphragm. He is most
funny.

If Lauren Bowler (Pauline Clench) were to show up at my door
in that girl guide uniform of her and those glasses I would buy all the
cookies, dump, my wife, dump Spencer Schoening, dump Celine Stubel, keep the
Red Miata and run away with her. In what could be a sort of not to PC comment
here, the former Globe Arts Critic Christopher Dafoe used to tell me that he
had the desire to have a date with Evelyn Hart and then feed her hamburgers. My
date with Bowler would be to read her War
and Peace.

But the best part of this show is Andrew McNee. I am sure
he must have some sort of real eating disorder. I watched him drink and eat.
The Ancient Romans knew how to deal with this sort of problem. I would not want
to know what the dry cleaning bill will be for the jacket he wears to which
McNee smears his full-of-food hands. He would make a brilliant paring with the
droll humour of Ryan Beil.

The most amazing discovery for me is how closely One Man,
Two Guvnors follows the plot of Venetian playwright Claudio Goldoni’s play Il
servitore di due padroni which he wrote in 1743. Perhaps the only changes are
the presence for all those reasons why one would not want to immigrate to
Australia. We might pause here to mention that we are lucky that Australian
Peter Cathie White, Executive Director of the Arts Club Theatre Company did immigrate
to our parts.

I discovered this amazing information from my useful Wikipedia.
We are not guaranteed that it is correct but here it is:

Goldoni originally
wrote the play at the request of actor Antonio Sacco, one of the great
Truffaldinos in history. His earliest drafts had large sections that were
reserved for improvisation, but he revised it in 1753 in the version that
exists today.

Some of you like me might not know that Truffaldino is
Italian for Harlequin.

So here goes my assertion (the last word would only come
from Costume Designer Nancy Bryant) that Andrew McNee’s Argyle tie and sweater
(socks?) and Cailin Stadnyk’s tight skirt with more demure Argyle decoration
(also a sweater) are a homage to that original harlequin, Antonio Sacco.

Christopher Gaze, Bill Millerd, Stanley Theatre January 28 2015

For a while now I have discerned a similarity in how both Christopher Gaze and Ryan Beil deliver and talk. Beil is more nasal and yet when Gaze projects that Englishness of his and raises his nose up the sound reminds me of Beil's. I asked them individually last night. Gaze of course told me that he has had a long relationship with Beil. Gaze's children went to school with Beil and Beil did a few seasons at bard. I asked Gaze if he could imitate Beil. He said he could. When I asked he demurred.

Beil told me that inspiration for his actor-acting-as-an-actor role (Allan Dangle) in One Man, Two Guvnors he was inspired by Gaze's delivery in Bard on the Beach in order to project. I am sure that Beil declaming Shakespeare's Henry the V St. Crispin Day lines (so beautifully done of the cuff by Crhistopher Gaze even in a café as I have heard him deliver) would make me roar in laughter proving yet again the wisdom of Reader's Digest.

On February 27 I could fly to Austin, Texas and be home
again. Is that really possible?

Consider that in my former home we called the
Mexican/Americans in our dorm or in our classes spicks. I was in a never-never
land in being white who spoke English (sort of like the natives but not quite
Texan) while being able to communicate in perfect Spanish. I was kind of
shunned by both camps.

The first time I returned to my former home from my home in
Nueva Rosita, Coahuila, Mexico it was after the Christmas holidays of 1957. I
was in the 9th grade. I arrived late at night and our main building
looked like Dracula’s castle. I was homesick for my mother and Nueva Rosita. I
cried. It passed. Our busy schedule made me forget and by the second year my
melancholia for home was replaced by a happy eagerness to visit my mother
during holiday breaks but nothing more.

I felt I fit in because the Brothers of Holy Cross while
being firm disciplinarians did share their warmth, understanding and
intelligence.

My four years at St. Ed’s while seeming like they only
happened yesterday recede into a corner of my memory when I walk up and down
the stairs of Old Main. I can imagine, like in those films about passing
memories and events, our shouts as we ran on the stairs. This was prohibited
and often we were stopped by the very serious (he was really a pussycat)
Brother Francis Barrett. I can imagine the voices of Amos ‘n’ Andy, a program
that was turned on the radio for us in the evening when we were in our bunk
beds with Brother Rene who was our dorm prefect. Brother Rene, a fair and
strong man was possibly the only brother any of us really feared.I cannot listen to Ravel’s Bolero without
remembering how this man educated us as we slept with music that he deemed
important for our minds and souls.

I remember how in my 11th grade our room prefect
(by then we had rooms for four with bunk beds) Brother Anton Mattingly and I
would discuss in his room (he kept the door and mosquito screen wide open. I
did not know why because I was innocently naïve about such things) the merits
of our mutual cameras a Pentacon-F. He had the F-2 Zeiss Biotar (was I
jealous!) while I had the inferior Zeiss Tessar. I took his Spanish class to
avoid the complexities of reading Caesar’s Gallic Wars in Latin. But Brother
Anton taught me the Spanish grammar I sorely needed.

I could go on with all the pleasantries that a look back
into one’s past makes rosier than it surely was. But I am not sure. What do
keep into account are the jarring differences of my world then and my world
now. Then we could go up the elevator to the top of the University of Texas Library
tower and drink beer. How could we have known that a gunman would, just a few
years later unleash terror on students walking below? The terrorism of the time
involved disgruntled men pointing guns at pilots in airplanes to force them to
fly to Cuba. The idea of a belt full of bombs was years into the future.

In our dorms and rec rooms our TV sets were permanently
tuned to the one channel available at the time. It was a CBS affiliate owned by
LBJ. If there were other radio stations of the time I do not know. The one we
listened to was also owned by LBJ and it featured the music of Elvis, Twitty
and the Ventures. Those of us who were snobs had a preference for instrumental
music like those Ventures but we may have at one time admitted liking the
Everly Brothers.

Our campus had only one black man who was a day student. The
problem of bunking with such a man never came up.

The man we most admired was Walter Cronkite. I remember
sitting under a tree reading when one of our Cuban classmates came up to me and
said, “Your Catholic president has lets us down at the Bay of Pigs. I heard
this in the news with Cronkite.” I was speechless.

If there was a war going on I was not aware of. There were
rumours that one of the McDonnell F-101 had sent a rocket up the tailpipe of
MiG somewhere by the Matsu Islands near Taiwan. The idea of Mainland China
was nonexistent. The Chinese Communists were evil, very Chinese in my Blackhawk
comic books of the time. I do believe we had a couple of test exercises for a
possible atomic war. St. Ed’s was near the Strategic Air Command’s Bergstrom Air
Force Base. Only a couple of wooden structures that I spied from the window of
my plane as it landed on what is now Austin-Bergstrom International Airport
when I returned in the late 2000s.There was not one single Boeing B-53 bomber in
sight.

There was no sushi in our cafeteria faire. We had lots of
okra and on special days parboiled steaks were served. For breakfast we had to
smother our Korean War surplus powdered scrambled eggs with ketchup to make
them palatable. When our table mates weren’t looking we would abscond their
sausages or bacon with our forks.

In my 9th grade I would spit shine the seniors’ shoes
for pocket money. I never thought the job was a demeaning one. My secret ingredient
was a Mexican tin of “grasa” called El Oso.

At the end of our halls there were public telephones. We had
long figured out how to bend a coat hanger so as not to use quarters (? or
dimes?) Women, early practitioners of phone sex would call us on Friday nights.
The most famous one called herself Marcia. These girls knew we were living in
an all-male campus so they really liked to pull our strings. None ever
committed to a face to face date.

It was in the 11th grade that I told my three
other roommates that it was time we went to a dirty movie. The one I picked
sounded dirty. It was called The Virgin Spring. How was I to know this was a
highly rated art film directed by Ingmar Bergman? What I find astounding is
that such a film was being screened in our neighbourhood movie house. the Austin Theatre on the corner of
Congress Avenue and Live Oak St.

The first time I did return to St. Ed’s I found our main building
bigger than imagined it. It felt strange to see women students walking to their
classes. Few would have known that at one time it had housed a high school. The
high school closed around 1968. The campus is now the campus of St. Edward’s
University. It is difficult to find brother (Brother of Holy Cross) anywhere.
For all intents and purposes the university is a lay university struggling to
keep the word Christian in its every day communications.

That we sang Gregorian chant in our chapel on Sunday nights
was something I had no idea. We simply sang.

In a world in which spirituality is going to a Tolkien film
or practicing yoga, the only way I can return to my real home is to return to
the idea of what our school was in those middle 50s. It was a school of men who gave us a liberal
Roman Catholic education. Time had yet to predict the death of God. All was
well with the world and young women in roller skates and bobby socks served
hamburgers to your car (I never did enjoy that experience) on The Drag by the
University of Texas. And we all knew what hooking horns meant.

I can return to that home right here in Vancouver but I will
miss all the outside barbecues, the Texan accents and the ghostly voices (some
may even by my own) walking the stairs of Old Main.

Homecoming & Family Weekend 2015

Ready or not, Homecoming and Family Weekend 2015 is only a month away. If you have not already done so, register online today! You can view the Who's Attending list to see who of your classmates has already registered. You can also check out the full schedule of events to see all the fun activities planned for the weekend!
We’ll relive the memories, make new ones, reconnect with
classmates and faculty, and see how St. Edward’s has changed – and how
it’s stayed the same. Come home to your Hilltop and remember all the
reasons you love the blue and gold!

Friday Feb. 27: Alumni will celebrate together and kick-off Homecoming weekend at the All Alumni Welcome Back Party.

Saturday, Feb 28: We’ll start the day off with the President’s State of the University Address. Then we’ll head over to the Topper Tailgate & Festival
for fun for all – BBQ, bar, kids area, and booths from all of your
favorite campus organizations – including the Alumni Association. Men’s
and Women’s basketball teams will take on the Newman University Jets for
the Homecoming Basketball Games. We’ll have a chance to reconnect with our favorite faculty members at the Faculty Fête. The Reunion Classes (1965, 1970, 2005, and the St. Edward’s High School alumni) will gather that evening. We will finish the day with a Homecoming Concert!

Sunday morning, March 1: We’ll have Mass and a Farewell Brunch!

Need accommodations? We’ve put together a list of nearby hotels that make getting to and from campus easy.

If you have any questions, please contact the Alumni and Parent
Programs Office at 512-448-8415 or 1-800-964-7833. We’ll see you in
February on the Hilltop!

In the summer
of 2011 my wife Rosemary, our two granddaughters and I decided to drive our
Chevrolet Malibu to south Texas. This meant that in the back seat we had an
already difficult Rebecca, a 13 year-old full-fledged teenager and her sister Lauren
who was 8. For the former, Rebecca, most of the canyons we visited, including
the Grand Canyon were simply rocks upon rocks. For Lauren there was usually no
comment but in Meteor Crater Arizona (it was 40 Celsius when we arrived around
noon, she found much that interested her. I would say she was fascinated.

Throughout
the whole expedition at the crater I felt a strange degree of unreality which I
have never been able to explain to myself or to others. Particular to this was
the loss of a sense of the size of the crater which looked smaller than it
really was. When we visited Monument Valley the monuments were really a lot
smaller than in the John Wayne/John Ford films.

As I
survive these days of humid melancholy with that erstwhile teenager still a
teenager in our home I discovered a little nagging explanation for my Meteor
Crater unrest.

I never
did see Jorge Luís Borges in my many trips to the Pigmalion Book Store on
Avenida Corrientes in Buenos Aires. We simply never went on the same days to
buy our books in English. Had I seen him I would not have been surprised. And I
know he would have worn a tie and at the very least a sport coat and slacks.

In those
years , 1965, 1966 when I went to Pigmalion I was much too ignorant to
appreciate Borges as I do now. I would not have known that he had written a
book in 1954 called Historia Universal de la Infamia and that one of the essays
would be about the life of Billy the Kid. He begins his story, El Asesino
Desinteresado – BillHarrigan with a description of the area that we drove
through in our Malibu. In some ways the four of us in our Silver Malibu now
seem to be as strange as if I had spotted a blind poet in a tie, in spite of
the sweltering heat scampering gingerly with his cane at Meteor Crater.

The image of the
lands of Arizona before any other: the image of the lands of Arizona and New
Mexico, lands with an illustrious base of gold and silver, of dizzying arid
heights, lands of the monumental mesas and of delicate colours, lands with the
white glare of skeletons picked clean by birds. In those lands, another image,
that of Billy the Kid, the man on is horse, the young man of the hard pistol
shots that deaden the desert, the source of invisible bullets that kill at a
distance like magic.

Alex: I'll be in Austin the end of February for
the St. Ed's Homecoming Weekend. Will you be there? Have you been in contact
with Mike East? All the best to you and yours. --- Ray Fleck

I answered
that with the death two years ago of myreligious mentor and friend Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. that it would
be unlikely that I would attend. This plus diminishing funds while living in a
big house my wife and I cannot afford to fix is the deciding factor.

Raymond
Fleck replied:

It was fun to get together with you and Mike at
that earlier reunion, but time marches on. Sometimes we do have to go through
these rough patches. Yes, Brother Edwin was a wonderful guy. You know, he was a
native of New Orleans, so when Hurricane Katrina devastated the area, he and I
were in contact about it. The Brothers' old Holy Cross High School was wiped
out, but after a couple of years, Edwin told me they were rebuilding at a
different location in New Orleans, up near Lake Pontchartrain. I went over to
see the new place, and what they accomplished was truly impressive. Hang in
there, Alex. --- Ray

I have
written twice here and here about what I call the Brother Edwin Friendship
Quotient. This email from a man who is at least 11 or 12 years older than I am
is another proof of Brother Edwin’s (I could never have gotten away with
calling him Edwin nor would I have wanted to.) insight into friendship between disparate ages.

Mike East, Raymond Fleck, Lee Lytton III - 2011

Brother
Edwin Fleck, C.S.C. may have been just 26 when he had the high position of
Religious Superior in my 1958 Edwardian annual. I had finished 9th
Grade at St. Edward’s High School in Austin. He had an office next to the
principal’s on the main floor of our New-Gothic building that housed our dorms,
cafeteria, chapel and classrooms. I remember seeing what seemed to be a tall
gaunt man who with his glasses reminded me of a scientist ( particle physics?) or philosopher. He
never said a word for me as we had no connection except that his office was in
the same building where I lived. After 1958 his photograph disappears from my
Edwardians but I knew he was around for at least a couple more years. At some
point he became the president of St. Edward’s University with whom we shared
our campus.

In 2011
I attended a reunion at St. Ed’s and there was the tall and gaunt man in his
glasses wearing seersucker sports shirts. Now, not as tall as I remembered him, he was simply Raymond Fleck and he
introduced me to his wife. The remote man I thought he was, was warm and friendly . I
even had his doctorate all wrong. It was in chemistry not in physics.

During
some casual conversations over breakfast I found out that he had a connection
with a former classmate of mine Mike East. From this connection I found out
that the remote and gaunt scientist had the added talent of being able to get
rich but thrifty people to donate money to the university. For years many at
the university had thought that East Hall (the university’s first dormitory for
women) was simply called that because of its location. Raymond Fleck set the
story straight here.

As my
friends move away or die I find it pleasant and rewarding to understand the
making of new friends - in particular my friendship to Raymond Fleck. When he was Brother Raymond
there was an unfathomable gulf between us. It has dissolved. Brother Edwin
would simply say to me, “I told you so. It’s math.”And here is a clarification of it all from Raymond Fleck:

I first went to St. Ed's in 1954, to teach Chemistry at the
University. Three years later, at 30 years of age, I became President. The
office of the President was across the hall from the High School Principal's
office. In those days, the President was the Religious Superior of all the
Brothers assigned to the High School and the University. In 1964, the office of
Religious Superior was separated from the President position. I continued as
President of the University, and Brother Romard Barthel (a long-time teacher of
Physics at the University) became Religious Superior of the Brothers assigned
to the University. In addition to continuing as Principal, Brother Peter
Celestine Maranto became Religious Superior of the Brothers assigned to the
High School.The 1960s were often times of chaos and personal trial. I left St.
Ed's and its presidency in 1969, and left the Brothers of Holy Cross in 1970.

Here is my LinkedIn profile summary:

A native of Brooklyn, NY, Ray graduated from Brooklyn
Technical High School. He enlisted in the Navy while he was 17, towards the end
of WW II, and served for 18 months, ending up as an Aviation Electronics
Technician. A life-long member of the Catholic Church, he served in the
Brothers of Holy Cross for 22 years, including 12 years as President of St.
Edward's University in Austin, TX. After leaving St. Edward's and the Brothers,
Ray engaged in research in environmental chemistry at UC Davis, served as
President of Marygrove College in Detroit, MI for seven years, and worked in research
administration at UC Davis and at Cal Poly Pomona. He retired in 1995 after 41
years of service in higher education.